Only the lightest elements developed early on in the very young universe, before there were stars and galaxies...and there were no planets, asteroids and comets yet, because these required the existence of even heavier elements.
These earliest elements are
- hydrogen,
- helium,
- and to much LESS abundant - lithium.
These elements first existed in the epoch known as the
Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN), when the nuclei bound together the protons and neutrons (there are no neutrons within hydrogen nuclei).
But in this epoch (BBN), electrons have not yet bound themselves to these elements.
This BBN was first predicted by the Russian astrophysicist, George Gamow, in 1948, with the assistance of his former American student Ralph Alpher. Gamow included his BBN into Georges Lemaître's theory about expanding universe model.
1948 is the same year, when the name "Big Bang" was coined the first by Fred Hoyle.
Apparently, Hoyle was being interviewed on BBC radio about his own competing hypothesis, known as the Steady State model or Steady State theory. His theory was actually a hypothesis, not scientific theory, because it was untested.
Anyway Hoyle referred to Lemaître's expanding universe or inflationary universe theory as the "Big Bang" theory, so this name we got stuck with, even it doesn't really what the BB model is.
But getting back to Gamow and Alpher, in the same year (1948), both Alpher and his fellow-American physicist Robert Herman, with Gamow assistance wrote a separate paper that predicted the existence of Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMBR).
This CMBR occurred in the epoch known as the
Recombination epoch, where electrons bound themselves to those earliest elements. Binding the electrons to the nuclei of those elements, release tremendous amount of energies in the form of photons (light) and heat.
If you understand your physics about electromagnetism, you would known that LIGHT have two dual (very fundamental, but different) properties. Light is both -
- wave, hence like all other electromagnetic energy, have measurable wavelengths and frequencies;
- and particle, e.g. photons.
What you might not know, that light or photons will decay over time, and billion of years will turn photons into microwave.
This is why radio telescopes and specially equipped space telescopes, first with COBE, then later WMAP and Planck space probe were able to detect CMBR.
CMBR was first detected in 1964, by two American physicists and astronomers - Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson - who won their Nobel Price for their discovery. This CMBR is what debunked Hoyle's Steady State model, and further confirm the Big Bang theory of Lemaître and Gamow-Alpher-Herman team.
My point is that history lesson about the Big Bang epochs (Big Bang Nucleosynthesis and Recombination epoch) is that the development of these light elements required to occur before the formation of the earliest generation of stars.
There no heavier elements before the stars, and more importantly no dusts yet. Dusts are waste byproducts, and they are made up of heavier elements.
My point is that without the heavier elements (such as iron and other metals) as well as the dusts, there can be no planets.
Stars are made out of largely hydrogen atoms. They (hydrogen atoms) are the fuel to form heavier elements.
If you do understand about the stars, including our sun, you would know, you would know that both the star's core and outer layers, are made out of hydrogen, the lightest of element in our universe.
You would also need to understand about nuclear physics too, especially about "nuclear fusion". Nuclear fusion work in the opposite direction to "nuclear frisson". You would only need to focus on nuclear fusion to understand how stars work and how heavier elements came to be.
To make heavier element, like the helium atoms, two hydrogen atoms need to fuse together to form a single helium atom. This process of fusion and producing heavier elements is known as Stellar Nucleosynthesis.
When a star run out of hydrogen atoms to fuse together, it begin to fusing together helium atoms to make even heavier elements. When a star begin to use helium to fuse, the star begin its stage of dying.
There are four possible scenarios or fates when the stars end it life:
- the stage of first Red Giant, then White Dwarf, which will take billion of years, before the white dwarf lose all luminosity.
- go Supernova (star exploding)
- turn into neutron star
- or turn into Blackhole.
Which fate the star will end up, depends on the star's mass. The more mass star has, the more likely it will go supernova.
Our sun is a main sequence yellow dwarf star, so the star with same mass as our sun (known as solar mass), will end up as Red Giant, then as White Dwarf.
A red giant star is when star begin fusing helium into heavier elements, and it will begin losing the outer layers. These outer layers being stripped away and ejected, become debris in outer space, including tiny particles that we called star dusts. When the red giant star lose all the outer layer shells, only the star's core will remain, and that why it is called white dwarf star.
Stars more massive than our sun, at least 2 or 3 more solar masses, will become supernova, when the core reach its critical stage and explode. Like the red giant stars that eject debris and dust into space, so would a star that explode (supernova).
Ignoring the neutron stars and black holes, the debris and dust from those dying or dead stars, are the materials that make up objects like planets and asteroids.
To get back to bible's Genesis, the Big Bang theory doesn't support the creation, because according to Genesis 1:1, god created heaven and earth first. Stars, including our sun, wasn't created till the 4th creative day.
Our solar system, including the Earth and Sun, didn't exist when the first generation of stars exist in the young universe. Our solar system didn't appear until 9 billion years after the Big Bang and the earliest stars. Our sun is most likely a 3rd, if not 4th generation star.
There have to be enough debris to form planets, and there weren't much until 3rd generation of stars.
Our Earth and solar system may be 4.7 billion years old, but clearly the Earth didn't form before the earlier stars, which is the opposite of what Genesis 1:1 and the 4th day are saying.
